Dave's Dispatch: The Christmas Tree is up at London Covent Garden

Hello, everyone! My name is Dave Rogers, and I work with the Social Program at Kaplan International London Covent Garden. New students from all over the world arrive every week and I am responsible for welcoming them to London and helping them to enjoy their time in the city!

Last Tuesday was a very special day at Kaplan Covent Garden - the day that our Christmas tree arrived. It wasn’t delivered by an elf, but it was still a very magical experience...

And what a tree it is! It’s about ten feet high, and although it has left lots of little green needles everywhere that we have to clean up later, we love it dearly!

After we secured the tree to its stand in the corner of the Student Room, we decided to spend a whole day decorating it. This was my chance to show some of the students a few of the more traditional things we like to do in London at Christmastime.

So the first thing I did was put on my Santa hat before opening a few boxes of mince pies. It was an honour to feed a few of the students their first ever-mince pies, but the verdict was fairly mixed. One student said they were delicious, and another student strongly disagreed, but it was ok; they could use chocolate to get rid of the taste in their mouths afterwards!

I also prepared a jug of non-alcoholic mulled wine, which was very popular. The only problem was that it disappeared very quickly.

Overall the food and drink was a success, so it was time to get to work. We had two big boxes of decorations and a huge tree to decorate, so no time could be wasted.

We listened to a few delectable Christmas Classics while we worked; songs like "Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree" and "I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas". (A few students agreed with that sentiment, as they’ve never seen snow before!)

Selfies were taken, yet more food and was consumed, and in the end, the tree looked amazing. Everyone is very happy with it!

To make the tree extra-special, we were very lucky to have had fantastic donations given to us by the Kaplan Covent Garden Study Centre. They’d spent all day crafting beautiful decorations for the tree that were made with felt, cotton, glitter and glue. The tree now has little parts of the personalities of our students hanging from its branches, which is a wonderful thing to behold!

Over the next few weeks, Kaplan Covent Garden has lots of exciting things planned for Christmas. We’ll be making Christmas cards in the Study Centre to be delivered to each other. We’re having a huge Christmas party this Friday at Qube that students can attend free of charge, and who knows, maybe one day before school ends for the festive season, a certain big-bellied, red-suited and exceptionally jolly man may appear, to wish the students a Merry Christmas…

I just wish those fake beards weren’t so itchy!